


Unexpected Cliches

by TheMikeWheelers (jasongracefully)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 02:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10799355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasongracefully/pseuds/TheMikeWheelers
Summary: This wasn't how Steve expected his life to turn out, but looking at Nancy, he was glad this was his life.





	Unexpected Cliches

Steve's father always told him he was going to graduate Hawkins High, go play football at some major college, then get a good job and lead a successful life that would make _his father_ proud.

Steve never questioned this, he never stopped to wonder if doing this would make _him_ proud of himself. It was just the way he had always expected his life to turn out. 

Then he met Nancy Wheeler. 

Somewhere along the way, Steve had fallen hopelessly in love with this girl, and now he realized he didn't care about what his father wanted. He was in a run-down old car, with guns and baseball bats in the backseat, and he had no idea exactly where he was going, but Nancy was in the seat next to him and Steve now knew that what he wanted was to make _her_ proud. 

She wasn't like most of the girls he had dated before. She was reserved and studious, never taking the attention off her studies or her friends to think about boys. She seemed, by every definition, the stereotypical _good girl in the neighborhood._

Nancy intrigued Steve, in a way no girl had caught his attention before. He wanted to know more about her, to see who she was behind the high GPA. He just figured she'd just be a new kind of girl for him to have fun with, he wasn't expecting to meet the love of his life. 

What he learned quickly, though, was that Nancy wasn't that stereotypical good girl. She chugged a can of beer and had no hesitations in slapping him in the face when he messed up, but those weren't the things that caught Steve's eye. No, it was the way her mind always had a strategy, a plan to deal with whatever was coming. She had set the Byers house up in flames, but it was all so _coordinated_ and _courageous_ , he couldn't help but be amazed. 

Nancy Wheeler wasn't a good girl, at least not to Steve. Nancy Wheeler was the badass who went after monsters with a revolver and a bat, who could have ran and saved herself, but instead _chose_ to go after the monster. 

In one week of knowing Nancy, his entire world changed. Not only was he exposed to a whole different dimension, to a whole new idea of what ‘monstrous’ meant, but he realized that the person he was didn't correlate with the life he was now living. 

Steve’s life was no longer football and pleasing his dad, his biggest problem was no longer struggling to pass chemistry. That wasn't the life he was living anymore, and that wasn't the life he _wanted_ to live. 

He wanted to live a life like Nancy’s. Steve wanted to be just like the girl he admired, to be able to go after monsters without second-guessing it. 

So Steve changed himself. 

He stopped talking to Tommy and Carol, and he became a better man for Nancy. Every moment he tried to remind himself to _be brave_ , because someday he was going to utilize his built-up bravery and become a hero. Nancy was already a hero, and though she swore to Steve that he was one too, he didn't believe it. He had to prove it to himself. 

He changed his life senior year, and after graduation, Steve was ready to live life how _he_ wanted to live it, not how his father did. He wasn't about to go play any college sports, or get a job at his father's company, or do any of the things he was pressured to do for so long. 

He only wanted to do what made him happy. And that meant sitting in his car, screaming out the lyrics to his Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi, and Van Halen mix, as he went off to kill some monsters. 

_The jock. The All-American boy. The douche. The jerk. The player._

These were all names Steve had heard people call him in his life, he knew the way people saw him. He was just some high school cliche, who they figured would wipe out right after graduation. 

_Well fuck cliches._

He was done being a cliche or being some cookie-cutter image in someone else's eyes. 

Nancy went off to college, and Steve decided not to. He could figure all that out in the future, but right now he was young and he decided to live how he wanted to.

He didn't stay in Hawkins, because without Nancy, there wasn't much reason to stay there. So he took to the road, with some weapons in the trunk ready to go across the country, and kick some monster ass. 

Over breaks, he visited Nancy and spent every moment he could with her. Then, once the summer came and she was done with exams, she went off with Steve. 

She had spent months off at school, being the mysteriously studious girl that caught Steve’s eye back in the beginning of junior year. If anything, she was just as much of a cliche as he was. 

_The good girl. The intellectual. The bookworm. The “most likely to succeed.”_

Nancy was different from Steve though, she had made peace with her cliches. She insisted that the smart, good-girl part of her was just as big of a part as the rebellious monster hunter. Steve figured this was because Nancy _liked_ who she was before that November of 1983, she was already independent. Steve couldn't say the same for himself. 

So now the summer had begun, and Steve and Nancy were off. They packed the car up and drove off into the sunset, ready for wherever they would end up, and whatever they would run into. 

For the first time in Steve’s life, he was happy. He had rejected what his father wanted, he was fighting monsters, he was doing something that _he_ wanted to. _He felt like a hero._

So as he blasted classic rock and Nancy shared her stories from school, Steve couldn't help but smile. This wasn't where he had expected his life to end up, in fact it was about as far as possible from what he thought. But he was happy and content and doing something good with his life, and he wouldn't change a thing. 

And it was all because of her.


End file.
